His Excellency the Minister Part 63

After having given his first orders and arranged his most important doc.u.ments, Sulpice went out to walk to Marianne's. At first he wandered along mechanically without realizing that he was going toward the quays, almost fearing the interview with his mistress, now that he was only a defeated man. He had nearly reached the Seine before he was aware of it.

He looked at his watch.

Eleven o'clock.

Marianne had been awaiting him for some time.

He now followed, with the slow march of persons oppressed with a sense of weariness, these deserted quays, that terrace on the bank of the river, whose bal.u.s.trades permitted glimpses of the silhouettes of slender trees. He met no one. Upon the Place de la Concorde, still wet with the scarce dried rain of this November night, as mild as an evening in spring, permeated by a warm mist, he looked for a moment at the Palace of the Corps Legislatif, gloomy-looking and outlining its roofs against the misty sky, whose gleams fell on the horizon with a bluish tint, while upon the broad sidewalks, the jets of gas magnified the reddened reflections with their own ruddy hues. Along the grand avenue of the Champs-elysees there were only two immense parallel rows of gas-lamps and here and there, moving, luminous points that looked like glow-worms. Vaudrey mechanically stopped a moment to contemplate the scene.

That did not interest him, but something within him controlled him. He continued to walk unwittingly in the direction of Parc Monceau. The solitude of the Champs-elysees pleased him. While pa.s.sing before an important club with its windows lighted, he instinctively shuddered.

Through the lace-like branches of the trees, he looked at the green shades, the l.u.s.tres, the unpolished sconces, with the backgrounds of red and gold hangings, and the great, gold frames, and he imagined that they were discussing the causes of his defeat and the success of Granet.

"They are speaking of me, in there! They are talking about my fall! He is fallen! Fallen! Beaten!--They are laughing, they are making jokes!

There are some there who yesterday were asking me for places."

He continued on his way without quickening his pace; the deserted cafe concerts, as melancholy-looking as empty stages, the wreaths of suspended pearl-like lamps illuminated during the summer months but now colorless, seemed ironical amid the clumps of bare trees as gloomy as cemetery yews, exhaling a sinister, forsaken spirit as if this solitude were full of extinct songs, defunct graces, phantoms, and last year's mirth. And Vaudrey felt a strangely delicious sensation even in his bitterness at this impression of solitude, as if he might have been lost, forgotten forever, in the very emptiness of this silent corner.

Going on, he pa.s.sed before the elysee.

A _sergent de ville_ who was slowly pacing up and down in front of an empty sentry-box, his two hands ensconced in the sleeves of his coat, the hood of which he had turned up, cast a sidelong glance at him, almost suspiciously, as if wondering what a prowler could want to do there, at such an hour.

"He does not know whom he has looked at," he said. "And yesterday, only yesterday, he would have saluted me subserviently!"

The windows of the elysee facing the street were still lighted up and Vaudrey thought that shadows were moving behind the white curtains.

"The President has not yet retired! He has probably received Granet! And Warcolier!--Warcolier!"

Before the large door opening on Faubourg Saint-Honore, four lamps were burning over the head of a Parisian guard on duty, with his musket on his shoulder, the light s.h.i.+ning on the leather of his shako. Some weary-looking guardians of the peace were chatting together. At the end of the court before the perron, a small, red carpet was laid upon the steps and in front of the marquee faint lights gleamed. Vaudrey recalled that joyous morning when he entered there, arriving and descending from his carriage with his portfolio under his arm.

He hurried his steps and found himself on Place Beauvau. His glance was attracted by the grille, the hotel, the grand court at the end of the avenue. Sulpice experienced a feeling of sudden anger as he pa.s.sed in front of the Ministry of the Interior whose high grille, now closed, he had many times pa.s.sed through, leaning back in his coupe. He pictured himself entering there, where he would never again return except as a place-seeker like those eternal beggars who blocked its antechambers. He still heard the cry of the lackey when the coachman crushed the sand of the courtyard under the wheels of the carriage: "Monsieur le Ministre's carriage!"--He went upstairs, the lackeys saluted him, the coupe rolled off toward the Bois.

Now, here in that vulgar mansion another was displaying himself, seated on the same seats, eating at the same table, sleeping in the same bed and giving his orders to the same servants. He experienced a strange sensation, as of a theft, of some undue influence, of suffering an ejectment by a stranger from some personal property, and this Granet, the man sent there as he had been, by a vote, seemed to him to be a smart fellow, a filibuster and an intruder.

"How one becomes accustomed to thinking one's self at home everywhere!"

thought Vaudrey.

He partially forgot the keen wound given to his self-love by the time that he found himself close to Parc Monceau approaching Rue p.r.o.ny. In Marianne's windows the lights were s.h.i.+ning. To see that woman and hold her again in his arms, overjoyed, that happiness would console him for all his mortifications. Marianne's love was worth a hundred times more than the delights of power.

Marianne Kayser was evidently waiting for Sulpice. She received him in her little, brilliantly-lighted salon, superb amid these lights, in a red satin robe de chambre that lent a strange seductiveness to her bare arms and neck which shone with a pale and pearly l.u.s.tre beneath the light.

Vaudrey felt infinitely moved, almost painfully though deliciously stirred, as he always did when in the presence of this lovely creature.

She extended her hand to him, saying in a singular tone that astonished him:

"_Bonjour, vous!_"

"Well!" she said at once, pointing to a journal which was lying on the carpet, "is there anything new?"

"Yes," he said. "But what is that to me? I don't think of that when I am near you!"

"Oh! besides, my dear," Marianne continued, "your darling sin has not been to think of two things at one time! I don't understand anything of politics, it bothers me. I have been advised, however, that you have been thrashed by that Granet!"

"Thrashed, yes," said Sulpice, laughing, "you use peculiar phrases!--"

"Topical ones. I am of the times! But it appears that one must read the journals to learn about you. I am going to tell you some news however, before it appears in print."

"That interests me?"

"Perhaps, but it most a.s.suredly interests me!"

"Important news?" asked Sulpice.

"Important or great, as you will!"

He nibbled his blond moustache nervously.

Guy had not deceived him.

"Then I think I know your news, my dear Marianne!"

"Tell me!" she said, as she stretched herself on a divan, her arms crossed, looking ravis.h.i.+ngly lovely in her red gown.

He sought some forcible phrase that would crush her, but he could find none. His only desire was to take that fair face in his hands and to fasten his lips thereon.

Marianne smiled maliciously.

"It is true then," Vaudrey exclaimed, "that you love Monsieur de Rosas?"

"There, you are well-informed! It is strange! Perhaps that is because you are no longer a minister!"

"You love Rosas?"

"Yes, and I am marrying him. I have the honor to announce to you my marriage to Monsieur le Duc Jose de Rosas, Marquis de Fuentecarral. It surprises me, but it is so!--I have known days when I have not had six sous to take the omnibus, and now I am to be a d.u.c.h.ess! This does not seem to please you? Are you selfish, then?"

Stretched on her divan, her neck and arms sparkling under the light of the sconces, she appeared to make sport of Vaudrey's stupefaction as he looked at her almost with fright.

"Now, my dear," she said curtly, but politely, as she toyed with a ring on her finger, "this is why I desired to see you to-day. It is to tell you that if you care to remain friendly on terms that forbid sensual enjoyment, which is not objectionable in putting a lock on the past, you may visit the d.u.c.h.esse de Rosas just as you have Mademoiselle Kayser.

But if you are bent on finding in the d.u.c.h.esse de Rosas the good-natured girl that I have been toward you, and you are quite capable of it, for you are a sentimental fellow, then it will be useless to even appear to have ever known each other. I am turning the key on my life. _Crac!

Bonsoir_, Sulpice!"

The unhappy man! He had cherished the thought of still visiting his mistress, but he found there an unlooked-for being, a new creature, who was unmistakably determined, in spite of her cunning charm, and she spoke to him in stupefying, ironical language.

"You would have me go mad, Marianne?"

"Why! what an idea! The phrase is decidedly romantic.--You should dispense with the blue in love as well as the exaggeration in politics."

"Marianne," Vaudrey said abruptly, "do you know that for your sake I have destroyed my home and mortally wounded my wife?"

"Well," she replied, "did I ask you to do so? I pleased you, you pleased me; that was quite enough. I desire no one's death and if you have allowed everything to be known, it is because you have acted indiscreetly or stupidly! But I who do not wish to mortally wound," she emphasized these words with a smile--"my husband, I expect him to suspect nothing, know nothing, and as you are incapable of possessing enough intelligence not to play Antony with him, let us stop here.

Adieu, then, my dear Vaudrey!"